While helping out with our coverage of the Megan Meier/MySpace story, I spoke with Catherine Dwyer, a computer science professor at Pace University in New York. One of the things we discussed - which I didn’t have room for in the story - was her contention that there is a sort of movement taking place out there. It’s based on the desire to figure out a way to make people prove who they are when they go online.

“We’re really kind of going into this authentication mode,” Dwyer said. “We want to have our technology be fool proof. But at what cost?”

I started thinking about a conversation I had with a friend a few months ago about the anonymity of the Internet. To make everything safer, she said, everyone should have to provide some sort of identification. That would cut out a lot of the nonsense that goes on, she argued.

I wonder though. If you meet a stranger in the park or in a bar, you don’t generally ask them to produce a government-issued ID before continuing the conversation.

Should the Internet, and the people who dwell there, be treated any different?